Class 2: Jewish Names and Jewish Identity

The Power of a Name: Naming Practices and Jewish Identity

What’s in a name? Naming practices shed light on history and emotions. They provide an opportunity to highlight our identities and our aspirations. Names can reflect experiences like migration, the continuing influence of sacred texts, or a connection to a place or time or language. In their choices for baby, family, and pet names, Jews historically have emulated their non-Jewish neighbors but also maintained distinctiveness. Names and name stories, and the collective pool of Jewish names in a given Jewish community, reflect the balance between integration and distinctiveness and between tradition and innovation. 

Jews have always drawn inspiration for their children’s names from a mix of sources, using, for example, distinctly Jewish names like Tsiporah and Ephraim from biblical Hebrew, locally popular versions of biblical names like Hannah and Jacob, and local nonbiblical names like Emily and Dylan. Boys have been more likely to receive biblical names because of the historical gender gap in ritual participation (girls did not need Hebrew ritual names), but also because there are thousands of male names in the Bible but only a few dozen female names. Jews have also tended to name babies in honor of loved ones—Sephardim (Jews with ancestry in Spain) after living or deceased relatives and Ashkenazim (Jews from Central and Eastern Europe) only in memory of the deceased (see The Meaning and History of a Sephardi-Ashkenazi Name). These traditions have led to the preservation of names across generations. Sometimes honoree naming is based on similarity in sound or meaning, using the same first letter in the name (e.g., Julius named after Joseph) or using the English translation of a Hebrew name (e.g., Rose named after Vered, Heb., “rose”). Some parents give their children a non-Hebrew name that they go by generally and a Hebrew name that they use in Jewish contexts. For example, a girl named Molly might have the Hebrew name Malka and use it at her bat mitzvah. Some Jews have also interpreted locally popular names as Hebrew words.

Some examples:

• Aiden: Irish for “little fire,” interpreted as eden, “Eden” (as in Garden of Eden)

• Eliana: Greek, interpreted as eli-anah, “my God answered”

• Evan: Welsh version of John, interpreted as even, “rock”

• Liam: Irish version of William, interpreted as li-am, “my people”

• Lila: Persian for “lilac tree,” interpreted as laylah, “night”

• Maya: international, interpreted as mayah, “water”

See also the baby naming explanations for Amalia and Mia Brakha.

Patronymics and Beyond: The History of Jewish Surnames

istorically, most Jews did not have hereditary family names. They acquired them from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries in various locations, based on local practice, fashion, and legislation, sometimes in line with local non-Jews and sometimes later. The following list shows when various Jewish communities adopted surnames: 

• 13th–15th centuries: Spain, Portugal (Sephardic Jews), Sicily

• 15th–16th centuries: Morocco, Algeria, Italy, rabbinic dynasties in Eastern Europe

• 17th century: Prague, Frankfurt-am-Main

• 18th century: Alsace-Lorraine

• 1787: Habsburg Empire

• 1808: France (Napoleon)

• 1811: Netherlands

• 1812–1845: Prussia

• 1821: Poland

• 19th century: Other parts of the Pale of Settlement (Lithuania, Ukraine, Belorussia)

• Late 19th and early 20th centuries: Turkey, Greece, Syria, Iraq, India, Central Asia (Mountain Jews, Bukharian Jews)

• 1930s: Iran

• 1948–1950: Yemenite Jews in Israel

• Late 20th century: Ethiopian Jews in Israel

When Jews did acquire surnames, they (or local officials) selected the names from several categories, including geographic, characteristic, occupational, patronymic (named after the father), and matronymic (after the mother; see Jewish Surnames around the World). Some were based on nicknames the individual or family already had, such as Gross (“big,” in Ashkenazi communities) for a large person, and Tsedaka (“charity,” in Sephardi communities) for a charitable person. Jewish surnames have sometimes been identical to names in the surrounding society, like Rosenberg (“rose hill,” an ornamental name common in German and Ashkenazi communities), Del Medico (“the doctor,” an occupational name from Italy), and Haddad (“smith,” an occupational name in Arabic-speaking communities). But some Jewish surnames have been distinct, reflecting occupations, functions, and migrations unique to Jews. Many of these distinctive Jewish names are from Hebrew, such as Melamed (“teacher,” used in many Jewish communities) and Ashkenazi (a name common among Sephardi Jews, likely reflecting ancestral migrations between Jewish geographic communities).

Jewish Name Changes and the Immigrant Experience

In the twentieth century, many Jews in Israel, Hungary, the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere changed their names to better integrate into the surrounding society (see Jews’ Names Were Not Changed at Ellis Island). In the case of Israel, the goal was to create a new Hebrew-centered society and negate diaspora cultures. In other countries, name changes often indicated a desire to overcome discrimination based on distinctively Jewish names. Many name changers selected surnames that had a similar set of sounds or began with the same sound as their original name. For example, the actress Fanny Borach became Fanny Brice in the United States, and in France, the Algerian Jewish surname 'Alûsh (Arabic, “lamb”) became Lelouch so as to sound more French. Future Israeli prime minister David Grün became David Ben-Gurion in Palestine (before the State of Israel was established). In other cases, people selected names with similar meanings, such as the Hungarian surname Farkas (“wolf”) coming from the Yiddish/German name Wolf and the Israeli name Even-Ari deriving from German Lowenstein (both meaning “lion stone”).

Jewish Pet Names: How Jews Name Their Animal Companions

Jews also express their distinctive Jewish identities in the names they select for their dogs, cats, and other pets (see Jewish Names of Pets). Most Jews in the United States give their pets names that are not distinctively Jewish, but a significant percentage select names they consider Jewish. The most popular category of Jewish (and non-Jewish) pets’ names is names of humans, like Moshe and Zelda. Other sources are Jewish texts and holidays (often based on the season in which the pet was adopted), Jewish foods like kugel and borekas, historical figures or plays on their names like Einstein and Golda Meow, and characteristics and terms of endearment like Motek (sweetie) and Yofi (beauty, good).